Wilson 
Young  People  and  the  Church 


WOODROV*/  WILSON 


rv« 


By  WOODROW  WILSON 


An  address  delivered  before  the  Fortieth 
Annual  Convention  of  the  Pennsylvania 
State  Sabbath  School  Association,  at 
Pittsburg,  October   13,   1904. 


Philadelphia,  Pa. 
THE  SUNDAY  SCHOOL  TIMES  COMPANY 


Copyright,  1904.  by 

The  Sunday  School  Times  Company 

Philadelphia,  Pa. 


BV 


WE  BEAR  a  relationship  to  the  rising 
generation  whether  we  will  or 
not.  It  is  one  of  the  principal 
tasks  of  each  generation  of  mature  persons 
in  this  world  to  hand  on  the  work  of  the 
world  to  the  next  generation.  We  are 
engaged  even  more  than  we  are  aware  in 
molding  young  people  to  be  like  ourselves. 
Those  who  have  read  that  delightful  book  of 
Kenneth  Graham's  entitled  "The  Golden 
Age,"  the  age  of  childhood,  will  recall  the 
indictment  which  he  brings  against  the 
Olympians,  as  he  calls  them, — the  grown-up 
people, — who  do  not  understand  the  feelings 
of  little  folks  not  only,  but  do  not  seem  to 
understand  anything  very  clearly;  who  do 
not  seem  to  live  in  the  same  world,  who  are 
constantly  forcing  upon  the  young  ones 
standards  and  notions  which  they  cannot 
understand,  which  they  instinctively  reject. 
They  live  in  a  world  of  delightful  imagina- 
tion; they  pursue  persons  and  objects  that 
never  existed;  they  make  an  Argosy  laden 
with  gold  out  of  a  floating  butterfly, — and 
these  stupid  Olympians  try  to  translate 
these  things  into  uninteresting  facts. 


726464 


I  suppose  that  nothing  is  more  painful 
in  the  recollections  of  some  of  us  than  the 
efforts  that  were  made  to  make  us  like 
grown-up  people.  The  delightful  follies  that 
we  had  to  eschew,  the  delicious  nonsense 
that  we  had  to  disbelieve,  the  number  of 
odious  prudences  that  we  had  to  learn,  the 
knowledge  that  though  the  truth  was  less 
interesting  than  fiction,  it  was  more  impor- 
tant than  fiction, — the  fact  that  what  people 
told  you  could  not  always  be  relied  on,  and 
that  it  must  be  tested  by  the  most  uninter- 
esting tests. 

When  you  think  of  it,  we  are  engaged 
in  the  somewhat  questionable  practise  of 
making  all  the  world  uniform.  We  should 
be  very  sure  that  we  are  very  handsome 
characters  to  have  a  full  heart  in  the  under- 
taking of  making  youngsters  exactly  like 
ourselves.  There  is  an  amount  of  aggregate 
vanity  in  the  process  which  it  is  impossible 
to  estimate.  Moreover,  you  will  notice  that 
there  are  very  whimsical  standards  in  this 
world.  We  speak  of  some  persons  as  being 
normal,  and  of  others  as  being  abnormal. 
By  normal  we  mean  like  ourselves;  by 
abnormal  we  mean  unlike  ourselves.  The 
abnormal  persons  are  in  the  minority,  and 
therefore  most  of  them  are  in  the  asylum. 
If  they  got  to  be  in  the  majority,  we  would 
go  to  the  asylum.    If  we  departed  from  that 


law  of  the  Medes  and  Persians  which  com- 
mands us  to  be  like  other  persons,  we  would 
be  in  danger  of  the  bars.  The  only  thing 
that  saves  us  is  that  the  abnormal  people  are 
not  all  alike.  If  they  were,  they  might  be 
shrewd  enough  to  get  the  better  of  us,  and 
put  us  where  we  put  them. 

And  we  are  engaged  in  rubbing  off  the 
differences.  We  desire  not  to  be  supposed  to 
be  unlike  other  persons ;  we  would  prefer  to 
abjure  our  individuality,  and  to  say,  as  Dean 
Swift  advised  every  man  to  say  who  desired 
to  be  considered  wise,  "My  dear  sir,  I  am 
exactly  of  your  opinion."  We  try  to  avoid 
collisions  of  individuality,  and  go  about  to 
tell  the  younger  people  that  they  must  do 
things  as  we  have  always  done  them,  and  as 
our  parents  made  us  do  them,  or  else  they 
will  lose  caste  in  the  world. 

There  are  two  means  by  which  we  carry 
on  this  interesting  work  of  making  the  next 
generation  like  the  last.  There  is  life  itself, 
and  that  is  the  most  drastic  school  there  is. 
There  is  no  school  so  hard  in  its  lessons  as 
the  school  of  life.  You  are  not  excused  from 
any  one  of  its  exercises.  You  are  not  ex- 
cused for  mistakes  in  any  one  of  its  lessons. 
We  say  a  great  many  things  that  are  harsh, 
and  deservedly  harsh,  I  will  admit,  about 
college  hazing;  but  there  is  a  more  subtle 
hazing  than  that.    The  world  hazes  the  per- 


sons  that  will  not  conform.  It  hazes  after  a 
manner  that  is  worse  than  hazing  their 
bodies, — it  hazes  their  spirits,  and  teases 
them  with  the  pointed  finger  and  the  curl  of 
the  lip,  and  says,  "That  man  thinks  he 
knows  the  whole  thing."  That,  I  say,  is  a 
very  much  more  refined  torture  than  making 
a  man  do  a  great  many  ridiculous  things  for 
the  purpose  of  realizing  that  he  is  ridicu- 
lous, and  so  getting  out  of  conceit  with  him- 
self. I  do  not  believe  in  hazing,  but  I  do 
believe  that  there  are  some  things  worse 
than  hazing.  And  I  have  suffered  worse 
things  from  my  fellow-men  since  I  got  out 
of  college  than  I  suffered  while  I  was  in 
college. 

Life  is  a  terrible  master  to  those  who 
cannot  escape  its  more  trying  processes. 
The  little  urchin  in  the  slums  of  the  city 
knows  more  of  the  prudences  of  life  when  he 
is  five  than  most  of  us  knew  at  five  and 
twenty.  He  knows  just  how  hard  a  school 
he  lives  in,  and  just  how  astute  he  must  be 
to  win  any  of  its  prizes,  to  win  even  the 
tolerance  of  the  powers  that  conduct  it,  even 
to  live  from  day  to  day.  He  knows  how  many 
cars  of  Juggernaut  must  be  dodged  on  the 
streets  for  the  mere  leave  to  live,  and  the 
keenness  of  his  senses,  his  shrewdness  in  a 
bargain,  is  such  as  would  predict  him  a  man 
successful  in  commerce,  would  mean  that 


some  day  he  was  going  to  overreach  his 
fellow-man  as  now  life  seems  to  be  over- 
reaching him,  and  imposing  upon  him,  and 
snatching  every  coveted  thing  from  his 
grasp.  The  process  of  culture,  the  process 
of  civilization,  and  the  processes  that  can 
be  bought  by  wealth,  are  largely  processes 
of  exemption  from  the  harder  classes  of 
the  school  of  life.  Some  young  gentlemen 
brought  up  in  the  lap  of  luxury  seem  to 
have  escaped  all  lessons,  seem  to  know  just 
as  little  about  the  world  as  it  is  possible  for 
a  person  to  live  nineteen  years  and  know. 
I  have  sometimes  thought  that  if  we  could 
get  a  whole  college  of  youngsters  who  had 
spent  their  boyhood  in  the  slums,  where 
they  had  to  have  wits  in  order  to  live,  we 
would  make  extraordinary  progress  in 
scholarship;  whereas,  when  in  our  discour- 
aged moments, — I  mean  discouraged  mo- 
ments in  our  teaching, — we  take  some  grim 
comfort  in  saying,  as  a  Yale  friend  of  mine 
said,  that  after  teaching  twenty  years  he 
had  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  human 
mind  had  infinite  resources  for  resisting  the 
introduction  of  knowledge.  But  you  cannot 
resist  the  introduction  of  the  knowledge 
that  life  brings.  Life  brings  it  and  unloads 
it  in  your  lap  whether  you  want  it  or  not. 
The  other  means  we  have  of  indoctrinat- 
ing the   next   generation   and   making  the 


world  uniform  is  organization.  The  indi- 
vidual process  is  not  enough,  we  think,  the 
process  of  working  upon  each  other  indi- 
vidually so  that  a  miscellaneous  set  of 
influences  prick  each  of  us  like  so  many 
currents  of  electricity.  We  think  we  must 
organize  as  a  body  to  have  a  given,  definite, 
predetermined  effect  upon  others.  So  we 
take  unfair  advantage  of  a  youngster  in 
organizing  a  whole  school  so  that  he  cannot 
escape  having  certain  impressions  made 
upon  him.  We  tax  the  public  in  order  to 
pay  for  the  schools  which  will  make  it  im- 
possible for  him  to  escape.  And  there  are 
various  instrumentalities  which  are  organic. 
In  the  first  place,  there  is  the  home;  then 
there  is  the  school ;  then  there  is  the  church ; 
then  there  are  all  the  political  means,  the 
means  which  we  call  social  in  their  char- 
acter, by  which  to  mold  and  control  the 
rising  generation.  All  of  these  have  their 
part  in  controlling  the  youth  of  the  country 
and  making  them  what  we  deem  it  neces- 
sary that  they  should  be. 

What  do  we  wish  that  they  should  be? 
If  forced  to  reason  about  it,  we  say  they 
ought  to  be  what  we  have  found  by  experi- 
ence it  is  prudent  and  wise  to  be;  and  they 
ought  to  be  something  more, — they  ought 
to  go  one  stage  beyond  the  stage  we  have 
gone.    But  we  cannot  conduct  them  beyond 


the  stage  we  have  reached.  We  can  only 
point  and  say,  "Here  are  the  boundaries 
which  we  have  reached;  beyond  is  an  un- 
discovered country;  go  out  and  discover  it. 
We  can  furnish  you  with  a  few  probabili- 
ties; we  can  supply  you  with  a  few  tenden- 
cies; we  can  say  to  you  that  we  think  that 
wisdom  points  in  this  direction;  but  we 
cannot  go  with  you;  we  cannot  guide  you; 
we  must  part  with  you  at  the  opening  of 
the  door,  and  bid  you  Godspeed.  But  we 
want  you  to  go  on;  we  do  not  want  you  to 
stop  where  we  stopped." 

What  capital,  after  all,  is  it  that  we  sup- 
ply them  with?  I  take  it  that  knowledge  is 
a  pretty  poor  commodity  in  itself  and  by 
itself.  A  ship  does  not  sail  because  of  her 
cargo.  There  is  no  propulsion  in  that.  If 
the  captain  did  not  know  his  port,  if  he  did 
not  know  his  rules  of  navigation,  if  he  did 
not  know  the  management  of  his  engines, 
or  have  somebody  aboard  who  did,  if  he  did 
not  know  all  the  powers  that  will  carry  the 
ship  to  the  place  where  her  cargo  will  have 
additional  value,  the  cargo  would  be  nothing 
to  him.  What  is  his  purpose?  His  purpose 
is  that  the  cargo  should  be  used.  Used  for 
what?  For  the  convenience  or  the  enlight- 
enment, whatever  it  may  be,  of  the  people 
to  whom  he  is  carrying  it. 

And  so  with  knov^^iedge.    The  knowledge 


you  supply  to  the  little  fellow  in  the  home  is 
not  merely  conveyed  to  him  in  order  that 
he  may  be  full;  the  knowledge  that  is  sup- 
plied to  him  in  school  is  not  put  in  him  as 
if  he  were  merely  a  little  vessel  to  be  filled 
to  the  top.  My  father,  who  was  a  very  plain- 
spoken  man,  used  to  use  a  phrase  which  was 
rough,  but  it  expressed  the  meaning  exactly. 
He  said,  "My  son,  the  mind  is  not  a  prolix 
gut  to  be  stuffed."  That  is  not  the  object 
of  it.  It  is  not  a  vessel  made  to  contain 
something ;  it  is  a  vessel  made  to  transmute 
something.  The  process  of  digestion  is  of 
the  essence,  and  the  only  part  of  the  food 
that  is  of  any  consequence  is  the  part  that 
is  turned  into  blood  and  fructifies  the  whole 
frame.  And  so  with  knowledge.  All  the 
wise  saws  and  prudent  maxims  and  pieces 
of  information  that  we  supply  to  the  genera- 
tion coming  on  are  of  no  consequence  what- 
ever in  themselves  unless  they  get  into  the 
blood  and  are  transmuted. 

And  how  are  you  going  to  get  these 
things  into  the  blood?  You  know  that 
nothing  communicates  fire  except  fire.  In 
order  to  start  a  fire  you  must  originate  a 
fire.  You  must  have  a  little  spark  in  order 
to  have  a  great  blaze.  I  have  often  heard 
it  said  that  a  speaker  is  dry,  or  that  a  sub- 
ject is  dry.  Well,  there  isn't  any  subject  in 
the  world  that  is  dry.    It  is  the  person  that 

10 


handles  it,  and  the  person  who  receives  it 
that  is  dry.  The  subject  is  fertile  enough. 
But  the  trouble  with  most  persons  when 
they  handle  a  subject  is  that  they  handle  it 
as  if  it  were  a  mere  aggregate  mass  meant 
to  stay  where  it  is  placed;  whereas  it  is 
something  to  be  absorbed  into  the  pores,  to 
have  the  life  circulation  communicated  to  it, 
and  the  moment  you  communicate  that  to 
it,  it  itself  becomes  a  vehicle  of  life.  Every 
one  who  touches  a  live  thing  knows  he  has 
touched  living  tissue,  and  not  a  dead  hand. 

So  that  no  knowledge  is  of  any  particular 
consequence  in  this  world  which  is  not  in- 
carnate. For  example,  we  are  taught  the 
knowledge  of  the  laws  of  hygiene,  but  what 
earthly  good  are  the  laws  of  hygiene  to  us 
if  we  do  not  live  in  obedience  to  them? 
Presently  disease  springs  upon  us,  and 
Nature  says,  "Thou  fool.  You  knew  these 
things.  What  profit  is  it  to  you  to  know 
them  and  not  to  regard  them  in  your  way  of 
life?  They  were  never  yours.  They  were 
never  part  of  you.  You  never  possessed 
them."  The  moral  of  which  is  simply  this, 
that  the  truths  which  are  not  translated  into 
lives  are  dead  truths,  and  not  living  truths. 
The  only  way  to  learn  grammatical  speech 
is  to  associate  with  those  who  speak  gram- 
matically. 

And    so    of    religion.     Religion    is    com- 


11 


municable,  I  verily  believe,  aside  from  the 
sacred  operations  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  only 
by  example.  You  have  only  to  ask  yourself 
what  is  the  effect  of  a  profession  of  religion 
on  the  part  of  a  man  who  does  not  live  a 
religious  life.  You  know  that  the  effect  is 
not  only  not  to  communicate  religion,  but 
to  delay  indefinitely  its  influence.  It  is  cer- 
tainly true  that  we  are  not  to  judge  religion 
by  those  who  profess  it  but  do  not  live  it. 
But  it  is  also  true  that  if  those  who  profess 
it  are  the  only  ones  we  live  with,  and  they 
fail  to  live  it,  it  cannot  be  communicated 
except  by  some  mysterious  grace  of  the 
Holy  Spirit  himself.  So  that  no  amount  of 
didactic  teaching  in  a  home  whose  life  is  not 
Christian  will  ever  get  into  the  conscious- 
ness and  life  of  the  children.  If  you  wish 
your  children  to  be  Christians,  you  must 
really  take  the  trouble  to  be  Christians 
yourselves.  Those  are  the  only  terms  upon 
which  the  home  will  work  the  gracious 
miracle. 

And  you  cannot  shift  this  thing  by  send- 
ing your  children  to  Sunday-school.  You 
may  remedy  many  things,  but  you  cannot 
shift  this  responsibility.  If  the  children  do 
not  get  this  into  their  blood  atmospherically, 
they  are  not  going  to  get  it  into  their  blood 
at  all  until,  it  may  be,  they  come  to  a  period 
of  life  where  the  influences  of  Christian  lives 

12 


outside  of  the  home  may  profoundly  affect 
them  and  govern  their  consciences.  We 
must  realize  that  the  first  and  most  intimate 
and  most  important  organization  for  the  in- 
doctrinating of  the  next  generation  is  the 
home,  is  the  family.  This  is  the  key  to  the 
whole  situation.  That  is  the  reason  that  you 
must  get  hold  of  the  whole  family  when  you 
get  hold  of  the  children  in  your  Sunday- 
school  work;  that  your  work  will  not  be 
half  done  when  you  merely  get  the  children 
there,  and  it  may  be,  their  mothers.  You 
must  include  the  fathers,  and  get  your  grip 
upon  the  home  organization  in  such  wise 
that  the  children  will  have  the  atmospheric 
pressure  of  Christianity  the  week  through. 
We  are  constantly  debating  and  hearing 
it  debated.  How  will  the  church  get  hold  of 
the  young  people?  You  cannot  answer  that 
question  unless  you  have  a  philosophy  of 
the  matter.  And  it  seems  to  me  that  the 
inevitable  philosophy  of  the  matter  is  this: 
There  are  only  a  certain  number  of  things 
that  impress  young  persons,  only  a  certain 
number  that  impress  old  ones,  or,  for  that 
matter,  that  impress  anybody.  The  things 
that  impress  the  young  person  and  the  old 
are  convictions  and  earnestness  in  action 
that  looks  like  business,  and  a  certain 
dignity  and  simplicity  that  go  along  with 
being  in  earnest.  You  will  notice  that  vv^hen 

13 


a  man  is  going  about  his  business  he  does 
not  study  his  gestures,  he  does  not  consider 
his  poses,  he  does  not  think  how  he  looks 
when  he  is  sitting  at  his  desk  in  his  chair. 
There  is  a  directness  and  simplicity  of 
approach  in  the  thing  which  shows  an  utter 
lack  of  self-consciousness.  He  is  not  think- 
ing about  the  machinery  by  which  he  is 
acting;  he  is  after  the  thing. 

When  we  say,  therefore,  that  the  way  to 
get  young  people  to  the  church  is  to  make 
the  church  interesting,  I  am  afraid  v/e  too 
often  mean  that  the  way  to  do  is  to  make  it 
entertaining.  Did  you  ever  know  the  theater 
to  be  a  successful  means  of  governing  con- 
duct? Did  you  ever  know  the  most  excel- 
lent concert,  or  series  of  concerts,  to  be  the 
means  of  revolutionizing  a  life?  Did  you 
ever  know  any  amount  of  entertainment  to 
go  further  than  hold  for  the  hour  that  it 
lasted?  If  you  mean  to  draw  young  people 
by  entertainment,  you  have  only  one  excuse 
for  it,  and  that  is  to  follow  up  the  entertain- 
ment with  something  that  is  not  entertain- 
ing, but  which  grips  the  heart  like  the  touch 
of  a  hand,  I  dare  say  that  there  is  some 
excuse  for  alluring  persons  to  a  place  where 
good  will  be  done  them,  but  I  think  it  would 
be  a  good  deal  franker  not  to  allure  them.  I 
think  it  would  be  a  great  deal  better  simply 
to  let  them  understand  that  that  is  the  place 

14 


where  life  is  dispensed,  and  that  if  they 
want  life  they  must  come  to  that  place. 

If  they  believe  that  you  believe  what  you 
say,  they  will  come.  If  they  have  the  least 
suspicion  that  you  do  not  believe  it,  if  they 
have  the  least  suspicion  that  you  are  simply 
playing  a  game  of  social  organization,  if 
they  have  the  notion  that  you  are  simply 
organizing  a  very  useful  instrumentality  of 
society  for  moralizing  the  community,  but 
that  you  don't  after  all  believe  that  life  itself 
lies  in  the  doctrine  and  preaching  of  that 
place  and  nowhere  else,  you  cannot  keep 
hold  of  them  very  long.  The  only  thing 
that  governs  any  of  us  is  authority.  And 
the  reason  that  it  is  harder  to  govern  us 
when  we  are  grown  up  than  when  we  are 
young  is  that  we  question  the  authority,  and 
you  have  to  convince  our  minds  of  the 
reasonableness  of  the  authority.  But  the 
young  mind  yields  to  the  authority  that 
believes  in  itself.  That  is  the  reason  that 
consistency  of  conduct  is  indispensable  to 
the  maintenance  of  authority.  You  cannot 
make  the  young  person  do  what  you  do  not 
do  yourself.  You  cannot  make  him  believe 
what  you  do  not  believe  yourself. 

I  have  known  some  parents  who  had  very 
deep  doubt  about  some  of  the  deeper  mys- 
teries of  revelation,  but  who,  nevertheless, 
tried  to  communicate  those  deep  mysteries 

IS 


to  their  children,  with  an  absolute  lack  of 
success  that  was  to  have  been  expected. 
They  did  not  believe  them  themselves.  Did 
you  never  have  the  uneasy  experience  of 
going  into  the  presence  of  a  child  who  did 
not  care  to  speak  to  you?  There  are  two 
beings  who  assess  character  instantly  by 
looking  into  the  eyes, — dogs  and  children. 
If  a  dog  not  naturally  possessed  of  the  devil 
will  not  come  to  you  after  he  has  looked 
you  in  the  face,  you  ought  to  go  home  and 
examine  your '  conscience ;  and  if  a  little 
child,  from  any  other  reason  than  mere 
timidity,  looks  you  in  the  face,  and  then 
draws  back  and  will  not  come  to  your  knee, 
go  home  and  look  deeper  yet  into  your  con- 
science. There  is  no  eye  so  searching  as  the 
eye  of  simplicity.  And  you  might  as  well 
give  up  the  attempt  of  trying  to  wear  a 
mask  before  children,  particularly  the  mask 
that  you  are  so  desirous  of  wearing, — the 
mask  of  hypocrisy.  It  does  not  work,  and  it 
is  a  very  fortunate  thing  that  it  does  not 
work.  If  it  did,  we  would  make  our  children 
as  big  hypocrites  as  we  are.  You  must 
believe  the  things  you  tell  the  children. 

Have  you  not  seen  the  flicker  of  the 
child's  eye  when  he  first  asked  you  if  there 
was  really  any  Santa  Claus,  and  you  told 
him  yes?  He  knows  something  is  the  mat- 
ter.    He    may   not   be   shrewd    enough    or 

16 


thoughtful  enough  to  know  what  is  the 
matter,  but  after  that  he  has  his  doubts 
about  Santa  Claus,  simply  because,  by  some 
electric  communication  that  you  cannot 
stop,  your  doubts  about  Santa  Claus  have 
been  communicated  to  him.  If  you  are  a 
positivist,  he  will  be  a  positivist;  if  you 
believe,  he  will  believe. 

It  is  all  in  the  atmosphere.  Sometimes 
it  seems  to  me  that  nine-tenths  of  what  we 
give  other  persons  is  in  our  personality. 
The  value  of  one  man  contrasted  with 
another  is  that  some  men  have  no  electricity 
in  them.  They  might  be  in  the  room  or  out 
of  the  room ;  it  doesn't  make  any  difference. 
Other  men  come  into  the  room,  and  the 
moment  they  come  into  it  something  hap- 
pens, either  attraction  or  repulsion.  I  can- 
not sit  in  a  railroad  station  comfortably, 
because  men  will  come  in  whom  I  want  to 
kick  out,  and  persons  will  come  in  whom  I 
want  to  go  up  and  speak  to,  and  make 
friends  with,  and  I  am  restrained  because 
when  I  was  small  I  was  told  that  was  not 
good  form,  and  I  would  not  for  the  world  be 
unlike  my  fellow-men.  So  I  sit  still  and  try 
to  think  about  something  else,  and  my  eye 
constantly  wanders  to  some  person  whom  it 
would,  I  am  sure,  be  such  fun  to  go  and  talk 
to,  who  I  know  has  something  I  would  like 
to  have.    And  yet,  as  for  nine-tenths  of  the 

17 


persons  in  the  room,  they  do  nothing  but 
vitiate  the  atmosphere,  and  you  would 
rather  have  their  breathing  room  than  their 
presence. 

And  it  is  thus  all  through  life.  A  man 
comes  to  you  to  press  a  piece  of  business 
upon  you,  and  he  goes  away,  and  you  say 
to  yourself,  "No,  I  won't  go  into  that." 

And  some  one  else  says,  "Why  not? 
Don't  you  believe  in  him?" 

"No,  I  don't  believe  in  him." 

"Do  you  know  anything  wrong  that  he 
ever  did?" 

"No." 

"Didn't  he  verify  his  statements?" 

"Yes." 

"Then  why  don't  you  go  in  with  him?" 

"Well,  I  don't  know.  I  won't  do  it.  I 
don't  like  his  looks.  There  was  something 
about  him  that  made  me  think  it  was  not  all 
straight,  and,  at  any  rate,  I  will  look  into  it, 
and  hear  about  it  from  somebody  else  before 
going  any  further." 

We  are  constantly  having  that  feeling. 
And  that  is  the  feeling  which  illustrates  my 
thought,  though  I  have  gone  pretty  far 
afield  to  illustrate  it, — that  it  is  conviction, 
authority,  simplicity,  the  directness  of  one 
who  is  going  about  his  business,  and  goes 
about  it  with  genuineness,  which  governs 
young  people.     The  moral  of  that  is,  that 

18 


you  are  going  the  wrong  way  about  accom- 
plishing what  you  seek  when  you  try  to 
make  that  entertaining  which,  in  the  nature 
of  things,  though  engrossing,  is  not  enter- 
taining in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word. 

To  tell  a  human  being  of  the  things  that 
affect  his  eternal  salvation  I  should  say  is 
decidedly  under-described  if  you  call  it 
entertaining.  It  is  not  entertaining  in  any 
reasonable  sense  of  the  word  to  tell  him  of 
the  things  that  most  profoundly  affect  his 
welfare  in  this  world  and  in  the  next.  I 
know  that  there  are  ways  of  telling  men  the 
truth  which  repel  them;  I  know  that  too 
many  men  are  tried  for  by  efforts  which 
merely  frighten.  I  believe  that  too  much 
effort  is  made  to  get  people  to  believe  for 
fear  of  the  consequences  of  unbelief.  I  don't 
believe  any  man  was  ever  drawn  into 
heaven  for  fear  he  would  go  to  hell. 
Because,  if  I  understand  the  Scriptures  in 
the  least,  they  speak  a  gospel  of  love. 
Except  God  draw  you,  you  are  not  drawn. 
You  are  not  brought  in  by  whips,  you  are 
not  drawn  by  a  frowning  face,  you  are  not 
drawn  by  a  threatening  gesture.  You  are 
drawn  by  love,  you  are  drawn  by  the  knowl- 
edge that  if  you  come  you  will  be  received 
as  a  son.  Nothing  but  yearning  draws  you. 
Fear  never  drew  you  anywhere. 

You  must  realize  that  it  is  all  a  question 

19 


of  personal  relationship  between  man  and 
his  Maker,  and  a  personal  relationship 
founded  upon  love.  For  love  is  the  only 
thing  that  I  know  that  ever  led  to  self-abne- 
gation. Ambition  does  not  lead  to  it ;  no  use 
of  power  for  power's  sake  leads  to  anything 
but  self-aggrandizement.  Can  you  name  me 
any  motive  in  the  world  that  ever  led  a  man 
to  love  another  life  more  than  his  own  ex- 
cept the  motive  of  love?  And  yet  what  we 
are  working  for  in  the  young  people,  as  in 
the  old,  is  to  show  them  the  perfect  image 
of  a  Man  who  will  draw  all  the  best  powers 
of  their  nature  to  Himself,  and  make  them 
love  him  so  that  they  will  love  him  more 
than  they  love  themselves,  and  loving  him 
so,  will  love  their  fellow-men  more  than 
they  love  themselves.  Everything  heroic, 
everything  that  looks  toward  salvation  is 
due  to  this  power  of  elevation.  It  is  a  note- 
worthy thing  that  we  reserve  the  beautiful 
adjective  "noble"  for  the  men  who  think 
less  of  themselves  than  of  some  cause  or  of 
some  person  whom  they  serve.  We  elevate 
to  the  only  nobility  we  have,  the  nobility  of 
moral  greatness,  only  those  men  who  are 
governed  by  love. 

You  cannot  create  love  by  entertainment, 
but  you  can  make  love  by  the  perfect  exhi- 
bition of  Christ-like  qualities,  and,  with  the 
assistance  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  by  the  with- 

20 


drawal  of  the  veil  which  for  most  men 
hangs  before  the  face  of  our  Lord  and 
Saviour.  Our  whole  object,  it  seems  to  me, 
in  church  work  is  simply  this:  to  enable  all 
to  see  him,  to  realize  him,  and  if  we  devote 
ourselves  to  that  purpose  with  singleness 
of  heart  and  without  thought  of  ourselves, 
we  shall  suddenly  find  the  seats  filling, 
because  where  there  is  fire  thither  men  will 
carry  their  lamps  to  be  lighted.  Where 
there  is  power,  men  will  go  to  partake  of  it. 
Every  human  soul  instinctively  feels  that 
the  only  power  he  desires,  the  only  power 
that  can  relieve  him  from  the  tedium  of  the 
day's  work,  the  only  thing  which  can  put  a 
glow  upon  the  routine  of  the  day's  task,  the 
only  thing  that  can  take  him  back  to  the 
golden  age  when  everything  had  a  touch  of 
magic  about  it,  when  everything  was 
greater  than  the  fact,  when  everything  had 
lurking  behind  it  some  mysterious  power, 
when  there  was  in  everything  a  vision  and 
a  perfect  image, — is  this  thing  which  he 
sees  enthroned  upon  the  shining  coun- 
tenances of  those  who  really  believe  in  the 
life  and  saving  grace  of  their  Lord  and 
Master. 


21 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

Los  Angeles 

This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


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